Wednesday, May 26, 2010

The Debut of SportsGrid.com

Today launches a new entry in the sports media landscape: SportsGrid, the sports extension of the Mediaite empire.

There are good original posts off of the big memes in sports at any given moment -- not unlike Mediaite in the media world -- but the glitzy product of SportsGrid is its... well, "grid."

It includes rankings of athletes, teams, executives -- even sports media -- based on factors like online buzz, search-engine relevancy and audience metrics.

It is exactly the kind of thing that navel-gazey sports media folks will obsessively look through, checking to see where they are, who's ahead of them and who's behind them.

It's a very clever and well-produced feature, updated constantly. It is a good stake to put in the ground to differentiate from other sites.

Traction will come with a combination of people checking out the rankings -- and the rankings getting referenced -- and people digging the original posts.

(SB Nation's national site front has been doing a terrific job of creating posts about the hottest topics that go beyond a static entry and get expanded as developments happen. SportsGrid may want to keep an eye on that.)

Sports media doesn't have quite the same competitive dynamic as news media -- and sports fans don't have the same habits as fans in other categories like politics or entertainment. It will be interesting to track the traction SportsGrid gets, both among fans and within sports media.

But the site is worth wrapping into your bookmarks or RSS. And, at the very least, I'll be keeping an eye on my ranking. Low 200s? WTF?!

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DanShanoff.com is a sports-blog spin-off of my long-time ESPN.com column, "The Daily Quickie." Anchored by an early-morning post of must-know topics, the blog is updated frequently throughout the day with new posts and user comments.